A Canadian in Italy

People who know me know I prefer not to read the newspaper. The biggest events in current history I get from the unavoidable chitchat that surrounds us. Everything else I find to be noise, and unpleasant noise at that: crimes, transgressions and the inevitable idiotic bureaucratic bumbling at all levels of government, reported from every corner of the earth. I even say that the more I hear of the news, the more I long to read Jane Austen. (Substitute any other author from the past according to your own taste.)

However, this policy does not hold while I am here in Italy on vacation. Part of the reason for my change in policy is that here I have reading time to spare (see my prior post). In my normal life I save all my reading time for books, not newspapers, not even book reviews, and I watch virtually no TV to boot (although I would if I had more time for it). But even more, the variation in my habits is due to the charm and interest of the papers I can get here.

The local paper,  called Il Resto del Carlino, (adorably meaning it costs only the change from an old coin: the Carlino) covers the world, of course, but it also has about 4 or 5 pages covering Pesaro, plus 1 or 2 covering each of the smaller nearby towns we also know well, like Fano and Urbino. The stories are of genuine local interest: lost cats, dogs improperly brought to the beach, numbers of people admitted to the local hospital during a heat emergency, events in the piazza, a daily feature on “the cute girl under the next umbrella”. I always look for people I know, or know of, and I often find someone. 

I also love, but LOVE to read the weekend edition of the International Herald Tribune. The news of the world is presented thoughtfully and yet the paper is kept short not by shortening the articles or making them graphic (in fact, the exact opposite of USA Today, which I enjoy reading when I am in the US for those differentiating reasons), but by lengthening the analysis on only the most important stories. Plus, I love the arts coverage, which always makes me long to catch the current big show in Bruges, or Tokyo. And, best of all, it carries the Sunday New York Times Crossword puzzle, to my mind the only crossword puzzle worth doing. None of this is stale-dated, so if it takes me until Wednesday to get to it, all 20 or so pages are still of deep interest.

Can you tell I am writing this on Saturday morning, just waiting to pick it up and start reading it? I am just finishing an article from last week about the divide between opera and musicals and attempts made to bridge the gap. Isn’t that something I could easily think about and write up myself? Ahhh! Vacation bliss.

Thanks for the idea, Rob!

Notes from Italy - Good and Bad - 2011

 Good - Food, of course! Burro di Bufala (butter made from buffalo milk [as in the mozzarella]) is awfully good. I think it might be a new product even here, as I have never noticed it in the stores here before. I had read about it in a magazine not long ago, and possibly it is available all over the world by now. It takes a lot to get me to pass up my beloved Burro Sorresino, which comes in an adorable old-fashioned yellow tin, but I had to try it, and it was worth it. Even the butter, on toast, has that slightly “farm-y” taste that I love in mozzarella di bufala. I am keen to try making a spaghetti alla carbonara with it. I love butter with the eggs and bacon of carbonara, even if olive oil might be more authentic.

I am always impressed with the care given to every part of food here. I live in a more northerly climate, in the middle of a big industrial city. Everything is grown elsewhere and shipped in, except for a very few precious items, which can be found in a very few precious restaurants. Food pleasure is available, and must be taken where you find it, but fresh and local, it mostly ain’t.  On the other hand, here everything is fresh and local, and that actually can be so extreme as to limit the menu. It makes me laugh (on the inside) when people are asked to describe what is served at a new restaurant in the area, because the local menu is already set. 

BUT, when you shop at your  little local grocery, the farmer picked the figs (ficchi bianchi - white figs in this case) this morning, and brought them in to his friend at the store (in a kind of gray market transaction). The shopkeeper asks if you are eating the melon right now, because she wants to sell you one that is PERFECTLY ripe right now. The different plums have different seasons a few weeks long and different names, and the nearby town of origin is indicated (or the province of Italy, if they happen to come from that far away – which is still only something like identifying peaches from Niagara in Toronto). The bread has to be eaten today, and all milk is only sold by the litre, and lasts only 3 or 4 days. That’s pretty fresh, and unpreserved.

Bad - Internet access. Will the torture never end???? Somehow trying to arrange for internet access showcases the worst of Italian organization. So much potential, so much openness to new technologies, so much bureaucratic bungling and delay. The past couple of years I have really been excited by the prospect of mobile internet access, and I even bought a device that not only receives a mobile internet signal, but broadcasts to its own little wireless network. Isn’t that awesome for a family of tech users – one little mobile key, powering the internet on a number of devices, and portable to boot? Last year we arrived in mid-July. By the time I purchased the device and tried my best to set it up, fruitlessly, it was already August, the Italian vacation period (yes – all of August) and no qualified help was available. I limped along, at least, with one wireless connection to my device. OK. This year we arrived good and early. I went in good and early to get help setting up the network. No problem. Bought a new sim card, loaded in unlimited data for 30 days. 36 beautiful hours of a mobile wireless network. Then…it died. And the bill had gone home to Canada, and there is no recourse. Now I am in the midst of trying transfer of the sim to my iPhone, in order to take advantage of the access I have paid for, but it does not seem to like it. Of course - the is phone locked! Should I try putting the sim in my old phone, in case unlocking an iPhone buggers it up for use when I return to Canada? Another visit to the stupid store, to figure it out; I almost can’t face it. Many of our favourite bars offer free wi-fi, but…access is complicated and many of the baristas don’t know how to sign you in, and…there are unexplainable periodic interruptions in service, and…we don’t usually go around with computers, for writing, but rather iPhones for jotting. However…

Good – Opportunity to read! I don’t know if it is the heat, or the freedom from the school schedule or the small town pace we are forced to adopt, or our lack of access to TV during all this spare time, but I feel such a sleepy torpor here (is that redundant?) that I spend a lot more time reading than I usually can. I find I am totally able to read whatever I want, no matter how challenging, or silly for that matter. Shout out to Gil here: I finally understand how to enjoy reading an e-book.

If you read an e-book in bed, when you are tired, and you stop touching the screen to turn pages because you are falling asleep, the BOOK SHUTS ITSELF AND TURNS OFF THE LIGHT, so you don’t have to! Oh yes! I had a some books that I was waiting to get at: a couple of LibraryThing early review titles, and I had bought an indie book from Amazon, on principle, from a girl who wanted to share her writing at the price of a tune on iTunes. You go girl! (This is a screen shot of Amanda Hocking's book on my phone.) And then the book turned out to be fun enough for summer reading, when I got around to reading it last week, that I went ahead and bought the 2^nd book of the trilogy. Then I uploaded a couple of sample books from my desktop into iTunes to sync over, and I plan to grab a couple of public domain classics if I can. Now all of you nay-sayers that say “Oh, it’s too small” and “I could never get used to it”: nonsense. Self-shutting-off-reading-light-and-book in one? Doesn’t get better than that at 2:00 a.m. (Said by a person who has always envied insomniacs their extra reading time.)

Bad – No bird watchers among our acquaintances. I think that Pesaro might be quite a diverse mini-eco-system? bio-zone? –sea and shore and rivers and hills, with quite a large nature park nearby. I feel that the birds have multiplied in number and kind over the years I have been coming, probably due to deliberate action to preserve the biosphere, and possibly by the dwindling of the fashion for hunting and eating them. I have a guidebook, but I find I like to look at a few guides to compare for identification purposes, and I can hear lots of birds that I can’t identify through a book. I need a knowledgeable person to tell me which bird makes that trill I am hearing and what bird makes that croak, and whether those large black-winged gulls that I see, which seem to really be northern birds, do in fact range down here now. On fish and shells, a lot of people are pretty good. Birds – still looking for someone.
(PS This is a Blue Tit, the local chickadee, and I have actually seen and identified one this summer, as I usually do. It is just that my list here is so short, darn it!)

Good – The local art shows look promising this year. I plan to attend an opening at the civic museum on Friday, and I have an acquaintance who told me about a small kind of private museum of works restored on behalf of the city by a local business association, and the "new art" museum in town, Centro Arti Visive Pescheria, which is the old (ancient) fish-market is closing a show of documentary photos (yawn) and opening something to do with Rossini that looks fun (yay!)

Bad – None of the music on offer looks like it will offer the thrill of the new that we have enjoyed other years. The Rossini Opera Festival seems to be scaling back (I imagine it’s all about the money). The ancient music series that we have loved in other years is all out of town, so less amenable to impulse. I might try to catch a performance of Rossini’s Petite Messe Solonelle, which is beautiful, and is usually offered several times by several different performance bodies. I've already missed one, but we’ll see,

Writing about music is like dancing about architecture

Sorry this has been  so long coming - you'll see why as you read on.

I was so pleased and surprised, and yet not so surprised either, that my two besties (as I like to think of them) James Ehnes and Tom Allen, both wrote me back courteous letters in answer to my questions! Two things are in play, I guess: I often think that they are both wonderful examples of Canadian nice-ness; and the public personalities that you FEEL might be sympatico ARE sympatico. James Ehnes, especially, who kindly wrote twice, gave me some real food for thought. I have provided a link to Ehnes's home page under Music Links and Allen's twitter feed under...uh...Twitter Feeds. You can check them out for yourself.

Also surprisingly, or not, as I was engaged in this correspondence and thinking, I realized I had arbitrarily chosen a couple of books to read lately that involve violin history, which was quite fun:

Revolution by Jennifer Donnelly, is a new book, for young adults, with a little time travel back to the French revolution as a way of approaching homework. The main character is a high school senior with issues and talent and family wealth, yet the story is surprisingly un-clichéd.








 
Fabrizio's Return, a remarkably adept book by Ottawa writer Mark Frutkin. His Italian is good and the setting feels very natural to me, and in accordance with my experience of a medium-sized Italian city. One of his characters is Niccoló (by implication Stradivarius), a violin-maker in Cremona, historic home of the violin.







Uncle John's Bathroom Reader Plunges into Music.
 And credit where credit is due - I could not resist this book, which I leaf through...well you know where...and it had a nice couple of pages on the mystery and history of Stradivarius, along with entries like: Bagpiper's Fungus and Twelve Recordings that Changed Music and Odd Homemade Instruments and 16 Random Lists About Frank Sinatra and...you get the picture.








Once I start thinking about similarities, I think about whether there exists a category, so I thought up some other works in the category of violin-history:

like the silly film The Red Violin,

and the remarkably beautiful book  Stabat Mater by Tiziano Scarpa, currently only available in Italian, winner of the Strega prize for literature in Italy. (The word means witch, and it is the name of a absinthe-style liqueur and the prize seems to be awarded to witchy, absinthe-style books - dark and tragic). Stabat Mater is the heart-rending story of an orphan girl under the tutelage of Vivaldi.

Of course that sounds like Vivaldi's Ring of Mystery, from the Beethoven Lives Upstairs CD Series, also about an orphan, who rather happily turns out to be the daughter of the duke of Cremona, who also plays a violin for Vivaldi. I had to make a new tag for my catalog on LibraryThing.




So anyway, I was kind of bogged down, with too much to think about and no way to pull it together into a post. As you all know by now: I think everything is connected and long to uncover and understand all the connections. Then I agonized, but AGONIZED, about how to edit a long interview to be more punchy, until my friends said to me "If it's all interesting, and it needs to be complete, just post it all. We'll get through it. Duh!" And then, I must tell you that since Jimmy E (as I like to think of him) had mentioned the old saying that writing about music is like dancing about architecture I thought, well, why don't I just finish up and post that video of myself dancing about architecture that I've been working on, as there seems to be some demand for it, but then I thought, no...I'll just finish up writing about music, so here it all is.


Really, the comments made by both Ehnes and Allen pushed me to think about what I thought - hmmmm - does that work? - and learn from them what I did not understand previously, and defend my ideas more robustly where I was too casual in my assumptions.

I decided that what you would find interesting is some of the back and forth. This first post is about playing an old instrument in the current style, which I was finding puzzling as a choice, and about playing Mozart. In a future post I'll cover some ideas on what defines the Baroque period.

Here is the note sent to me by Tom Allen:

If I understand your question, I think you're asking when violin playing progressed past what we now call baroque playing - is that right?

The question is more one of when did people start considering that the old way of doing things might have some merit.  Violin playing went through a huge surge in development around 1700, and then again in the early 1800s. Bows and bowing changed to produce a louder, harsher sound and techniques with it, but it wasn't until Mendelssohn began looking into JS Bach's music in 1829 that anyone really thought there would be any benefit in looking back.  Music was about progress, and the only music worth hearing was new music. Without recording, people simply didn't hear pieces more than one or two times and didn't think that unusual.(My emphasis, NM) Interest in older music, beginning with Bach, slowly increased through the 1800s, but even as late as 1949 it wouldn't have occurred to people to investigate how Bach's music would have sounded in Bach's time.  That only started in the early sixties, gaining major popularity through the 70's.

Allen has made a couple great points. I knew that playing period style on period instruments was a relatively modern idea, but I was overlooking the fact that in all the arts there is a strong drive toward the "NEW" which keeps things going forward, especially among the premiere practitioners or virtuosi. I should have been able to think of that.  Also - the very idea of recording the performance for multiple listenings! That is a terrific example of technology actually driving art, one of my special sub-interests in the category of all artistic achievement, and I completely overlooked the impact of recording on playing style and choices.

Ehnes gave his own reason for his playing style:  

 














When I perform a piece of music, my goal is to be completely, 100% convinced of my interpretation. Only then do I feel there is any chance of convincing my listeners. Naturally, I am influenced by the playing I hear around me, and my experiences as a listener inform my sense of taste and style. The playing I enjoy as a listener is playing that I consider to be musically committed.

So I wrote back to him:

I was thinking about what you said, and although I did not get it immediately, overnight I had a kind of epiphany: the sound and expression you consider meaningful you create when you address music of any period, with your current technique, played on a piece of technology in which an old box, with some re-engineering and modern parts (like strings), makes a beautiful sound, loud enough to fill a large modern concert hall, work with a modern-size orchestra, and reach an audience which responds emotionally or even passionately to the performance. I get it, now, I think.

I am always interested in how technology both drives and constrains art, and I just couldn't fit the pieces together quite right for the violin. The technology can be used in any way to support the art in any way. Not everyone will agree with or find pleasure in every choice, but who cares? I too believe commitment makes art. (Can't seem to get this the right size - sorry. NM)

I scored this response:

I think you get exactly what I mean!

Phew! I could do a dance-video about this, too, perhaps. Maybe I'll get to work on that, later. 


I can't say what a thrill it is to get information like this directly from the artist. It makes sitting in an audience of thousands feel so personal. 

 

I will even feel that we are having a personal exchange on the subject when I watch my friend's copy of the Ehnes DVD Homage with her, on which he plays: "...on 12 of the greatest instruments ever made. The Fulton Collection is perhaps the most important private collection in the world and contains many examples of the legendary names Stradivari, Guarneri, da Salo and Guadagnini. 

Ehnes performs 21 selections in a carefully planned recital programme specially chosen to suit each instrument and to work on its own terms. It finishes with a section comparing each instrument in an excerpt of the same piece, a unique opportunity to contrast the sound qualities of these spectacular instruments."


Yeah, baby!

Then, to begin the second part of our "interview", here is picture of the opening of the score of Mozart's Violin Concerto No. 5 In A Major K.219 in Mozart's own hand, just for the beauty and awe of it.

I love to see the "hand of the artist", so much less common for the composer than the performer. But in order to also see a special part of the hand of the performer-artist at work, I asked Ehnes about his approach to the pieces I saw him play, Mozart's Violin Concerto No. 4 in D Major, K.218 and Mozart's Violin Concerto No. 5 in A major, K.219 "Turkish".

When we were listening to your cadenzas, they sounded very similar to each other and with enough fast fingering (like Paganini, which I have also seen you play) and discord to sound very modern. I understand that it is the tradition that the soloist improvises or composes the cadenza. On the other hand, the program notes for the concert indicated that Mozart was one of the first composers to score the cadenzas in his concerti. As you have gathered, I am no expert on music or the violin, (although I am an ardent learner) so I am of course wondering whether you or Mozart or some combination is responsible for those musical moments which were the most interesting of the performance.

And got this very personal answer:

Cadenzas – while Mozart did notate some cadenzas for some (though not all) of his piano concertos, there are no surviving cadenzas for his violin concertos, and it is doubtful that he ever wrote any down. The cadenzas you heard were all mine; when coming up with them I took into account the form and length of the surviving cadenzas for his piano concertos of the similar, early period (there are a few from the 8^th piano concerto, I think? Maybe 9^th – can’t remember), and tried to take into account the types of figuration he wrote in his piano works as well as the kind of virtuoso violin playing that would have been popular around that time. Not Paganini, it is a bit early for that, but some of his predecessors, like Viotti, Locatelli, etc. Even late-Vivaldi. I’m glad you found them interesting! 



Says me, "Some listening homework to do, here."

As a further exercise in comparing modern and period playing of a Baroque composition, I dug out my Nigel Kennedy version of Vivaldi's Four Seasons and added it to my iPod. Kennedy is a punky-looking and -playing genius who specifically wrote in the notes for his all-time best-selling Four Seasons CD (1989) that he did not want to be beholden to tradition or period in his performance.
 

I already had Il Giardino Armonico's Four Seasons CD (1994) in there. They were about the first period chamber orchestra in Italy. I think I can safely say that the period performance movement started in Great Britain, and remains strongest there, and Il Giardino was radical for Italy at the time. I first heard this performance on my beloved CBC Radio 2 (or CBC FM as it was those many years ago.) I have loved this recording and memorized it with so many listenings, relegating Nige to the shelf. It's great to have him out again, and I have been playing them side-by-side as I walk, and drive, and listening carefully. They are actually both just awesome, and I keep coming up with new questions. 

Sadly, IT APPEARS THAT THERE ARE NO EHNES RECORDINGS OF VIVALDI AVAILABLE! I checked for music on iTunes, CDs and even had a look at the DVD. Oh man! How is this possible? I would really have loved to put an Ehnes version beside the other two icons, too.

Right now the marigold is wondering, not-so-nervously, about why Vivaldi chose the keys he did for each season. It is a delightful little chromatic grouping, and each of the three sections of the seasons is written in the same key:
Spring - E major
Summer - G minor
Fall - F major
Winter - F minor
Why? Answers or suspicions welcomed.

Surprise Book Review

Catch Me When I Fall
by Patricia Westerhof



It is a bit unusual for me to just write a review out of the blue, but this is such a lovely book! I found out that a book had been written by a teacher at my kids' school, and I was able to borrow it from the library, and read it immediately. Then I just had to get my thoughts down straightaway.

But oh my! This book of short stories is like seeing, out of the corners of your eyes, the sad margins around people's lives that you don't see when you look straight at them.

I love Westerhof's format of interlinked short stories, so characters track across each others' stories. It gives such depth to the sense of community. It reads more like one's real experience of other people than you get reading a first person novel - inside one person's head, or that you get from the way a novel usually concentrates on a main story and a few characters, with a central problem or tragedy.

I must also say that I love books like this that just are Canadian, without being CANADIAN, and I feel I must champion them, and recommend them as widely as possible.  All the marketed, promote-able books fall into the second category, from a handful of authors, which is a shame. "Received" is so boring.

Finally, this book is set in southern Alberta, in the Dutch immigrant community, and I personally enjoy books that mention Red Deer. My mom is from there, and for me, as well as in Canadian culture, it is a town with a multi-layered symbolic value. It is a place we know of, but not the place in which we live.

My final words: get this small book, and read it, if you can.

Scribbling Women Blog Tour

Welcome and hello! Thank-you for joining us from The Indextrious Reader.  After The Nervous Marigold, you can head over to Books and Quilts and check out her post. This is the fifth and last day of the Scribbling Women Blog Tour, Tundra Books third blog tour effort. For this tour, Tundra is hosting a huge giveaway: they will choose at random from people who have commented on any or all of the blogs visited on the tour, and give away a complete set of Marthe Jocelyn books - 28 books in total, for readers from toddler to young adult. So read, comment before midnight EST on APRIL 10, 2011, and enjoy! And hopefully YOU will win.

 Scribbling Women: True Tales from Astonishing Lives

by Marthe Jocelyn
Hardcover | 208 Pages
Trim Size: 6 x 9 | Ages: 14 +
ISBN: 978-0-88776-952-8
eBook: 978-1-77049-230-1

Toronto-born MARTHE JOCELYN is the award-winning author and illustrator of over twenty books. Her picture book Hannah’s Collections was short-listed for the Governor General’s Literary Award for Illustration. Her novel Mable Riley won the inaugural TD Canadian Children’s Literature Award. Marthe Jocelyn is the 2009 recipient of the prestigious Vicky Metcalfe Award for her body of work. You can also follow @TundraBooks, @scissorhouse, and the wonderful bloggers on twitter! We will be using the hashtag #ScribblingWomen

When I started doing a little looking around to figure out what I might want to say, I checked in with the LibraryThing algorithm, which told me: "you will love "Scribbling Women": True Tales from Astonishing Lives (prediction confidence: very low)". What that means exactly I'm not sure. (I had really enjoyed another ARC of Marthe Jocelyn's novel Would You. I wonder if that is their only clue?)  The title of the book is right up my alley. And a Blog Tour: that’s something new – I’m all over that. I loved the idea of reading any book being handled in that way. I came up with an idea straightaway. How about Scribbling Little Women? Reviews from little writers? I decided to hand the book around to a couple of girls I know in that category, girls who are voracious readers and writers themselves, to see what they came up with.

Because of the timing, I wrote my review before doing anything else. I always like to respond naturally, then see what else is out there. Then I thought up my questions, collected back kid reviews, and the answers from Marthe. I have to say that I felt a little self-conscious writing with a certain, yet unknown audience in mind, including the author and the publisher, rather than imagining myself in a conversation with my friends.

First my review:
This is an adorable, but slightly weak, book, a set of short biographies of remarkable women who also wrote about what they were doing. The tone is a bit “ooooh!” but that seems OK for a book directed toward "tween" girls. (Actually, you will see above that it is published with a 14+ recommendation, but in her answers to my questions Marthe herself envisions readers in Grades 4 to 7 or 8 - up to no more than 14 years old, in fact, and that is the tone she hits.)

The writers that piqued my interest in the book enough to join this project were the two I knew reasonably well: Sei Shonagon (I am a Japanophile) and Isabella Beeton (I know the facsimile edition of her book), and yet although I am always pushing kids to see, try, and know the wider world, I would not necessarily have thought of introducing any kids to these writers. For that idea, Marthe gets my sincere commendation. (You'll see why I say this, but love how both Marthe and I thought about the connection between "kids" and "the wider world".)

Then, in reading the book, the story I found most interesting was that of Margaret Catchpole, a woman convict, and one of the first 20,000 convicts sent to Australia. Her 11 letters sent back to England remain a precious entry in the scarce record of the founding of a colony. When I talk about Scribbling Women, I find myself mentioning that story.

Another compelling story that stayed with me was that of an Inuit writer. Ada Blackjack was a seamstress who accompanied a doomed attempt to colonize an arctic Russian island for Canada. Her writings were so "outsider" that her section was fascinating, if gruesome (like all arctic/antarctic explorer writing).

On the other hand, another story that stuck, because I was slightly repelled by it, was that of Daisy Ashford, a Victorian girl who wrote (dictated really) a book at the age of 9, a silly, simpering book that mind-bogglingly REMAINS IN PRINT! Will it have a boost in sales thanks to Jocelyn?

When I offered the book to some young ladies who read and write, and invited them to submit a review, they agreed with enthusiasm. Interestingly, they each chose to focus on one story and responded directly to the source material and the characters, rather than the sense of the collection or the collector. I guess that is just as it should be - the book is a showcase, the writer Jocelyn functioning as a virtual librarian, making suggestions to her patrons.

Isabella Beeton was one of the writers who attracted me to the book, and she attracted one of my little scribblers, too. Here is her review:

   Before I begin, I must confess to something. When I was choosing which ‘scribbling woman’ story to read and write about, I was attracted to the story and character of Isabella Beeton not because I had heard of her (or her book), not because the short description intrigued me, not because the picture interested me, but because I am also an Isabella.
    Working from that point and reading her story, I became more and more involved in the story of her works, and was even able to make connections between the two of us. As I read her story, I was struck by several things.
    Thing one: how young Isabella was when she wrote her book. I tried to do the math, and from that I concluded that she was between 25 and 30 years old when she wrote Mrs. Beeton’s Book of Household Management: Comprising information for the Mistress, Housekeeper, Cook, Kitchen-Maid, Butler, Footman, Coachman, Valet, Upper and Under House-Maids, Lady’s-Maid, Maid-of-all-Work, Laundry-Maid, Nurse and Nurse-Maid, Monthly Wet and Sick Nurses, etc. etc. Also Sanitary, Medical, & Legal Memoranda: with a History of the origin, Properties, and Uses of all things Connected with Home Life and Comfort (which I will shorten and from hereon in call ‘Mrs. Beeton’s Book). If you ask me, the title alone is an impressive literary work for a young mother!
    Thing two: how long the book was! I was lucky enough to get my hands on a copy of Mrs. Beeton’s Book from my grandmother, and I was surprised to see how thick (and heavy!) the book was! Of course, this copy was a facsimile, printed in 1968, and not an original from the 1860s. I couldn’t stomach the idea of reading through it (was there ever any intention of doing so?) and so I flipped through it briefly, occasionally stopping to read a particularly interesting-looking article.
    Thing three: the things people ate! Isabella’s Hessian Soup recipe calls for half an ox’s head. At first, I just skimmed over it, not really noticing the strangeness of this ingredient. Then it registered in my brain, and I did a sort of a double take, like, half an OX’S HEAD? Where did these people get half an ox’s head? Another definitely odd ingredient was 1 pig’s face; salt, for a dish called Collared Pig’s Face, which Isabella described as ‘a breakfast or luncheon dish.’ This recipe was also enhanced by a very useful drawing of a pig’s face. While the people who ate Collared Pig’s Face may have enjoyed it thoroughly, from the illustration I could gather that the pigs were not very happy to have their faces ‘collared’ and eaten.
    The fourth and final thing: how many servants people had. From the title, you can see that people in Isabella’s time had lots of help around the house. I couldn’t even tell what some of these jobs were. (by the way, the terms Upper and Under House-Maid are not in Wikipedia, except in the link for...Mrs Beeton) I looked for the terms in Mrs. Beeton’s Book, but the vast quantity of information hid them from me.
    Another thing I noticed was a strange connection between Isabella’s life and works and the meaning of our name. Isabella is a variant of the Hebrew name Isabella, meaning God is my word. Isabella’s book of instructions is like a passing on of her word.
    Isabella’s book and story were inspiring and interesting, and continue to interest and inspire me even after reading about her.

Another little scribbler picked out Sei Shonagon (as I also did) in part by virtue of her being the most historic of the writers in the book, but this girl is a also a budding Japanophile, with a taste for the rigour of Japanese art and design. Here is her review:

I have chosen to talk about Sei Shonagon. Sei was an amazing woman. She was able to express her feelings or emotions or thoughts through a book or a poem or even her diary. Her story of working day or night on a project is simply astonishing. Her opinions of people too.
Sei's father and grandpa were in the same occupation as Sei: poets in the Japanese court, around the year 1000! It is a mystery how Sei died but she sure is a scribbling woman!
It is nice how Marthe brought me Sei's story and taught me about her.  Thanks Marthe Jocelyn!

Here are the questions I sent Marthe. Her answers were interesting and informative, although I felt there was some disconnect between the questions I asked and the answers I got. As a default I included both sides verbatim.

Nervous Marigold: Is it an artistic decision or a marketing decision to keep this book to a young readers category? I mean did you envision reaching girls, or agree to scale the work to address a young audience because that is where your reputation has been made? 

Marthe Jocelyn: I intended the book for young readers, aiming at about 4^th grade through 7^th or 8^th grade. Kids start paying attention to the wider world during those years, and biography becomes a big part of their studies. I wanted to introduce a few non-famous, yet extraordinary women.

Photo of Marthe Jocelyn by Tom Slaughter

 NM: Who were the other writers that might have been on the short list, but didn’t make the final cut? The final list is so quirky I wonder about the near misses and what distinguished the writers you did choose.

 MJ: I have several names gathered for another volume, and there are many more hiding out there in the world, so I hope I have the chance to read them some day. A quick list of names might include: Mary Carleton, Elizabeth Penashue, Loreta Velazquez, Irene Nemirovsky, Ruby Slipperjack, Lady Mary Wortley Montague, sisters Martha and Mary Russell... the scribbles are endless...

NM: A little scribbler's question: You write "The Beetons' second baby was born...[and] following common custom, he was also named Samuel." Then, "...the second Samuel became ill...and died..." but the next son was called Mayson. Why was he not also called Samuel? What is the custom, then, please?

MJ: I could not find a factual explanation in the Beetons’ writing to explain the choice of names for their children. My guess, however, is that after two Samuels died, they likely hoped that calling the third boy Mayson would be a good omen for better health. Mayson was also a family name.

NM: What is your dearest hope for what happens when young people read this book? I have some ideas of what you might have wanted but I want to know what YOU REALLY want.

MJ: I just want them to be curious enough about one or two little things to go to the library and keep reading...

What are your ideas?


I read the book quickly, and with pleasure, but I can't say I would bother to search out the source materials for any of the women who were new to me. I was surprised because that was my first guess as to what Marthe might have wanted. After much thought, I had decided that perhaps Marthe's message was more like "Live your life in an interesting way, and maybe you, too, can record it if you like," rather than a specific inspiration to write, or try these kinds of adventures, or follow up on these women in particular. In the end my take-home from the book was Marthe's 'To Do' list at the end of the book - her personal response to the stories to which she exposed herself. I loved that bit.

However, in the final analysis, the reason Marthe Jocelyn is a successful writer is that she absolutely manages to connect with her target audience, and did so in my small sample. The girls were curious enough about the Scribbling Women to choose to read a story, one also was curious enough to spend some time with the source material and research a little further into what she found there. It is immaterial that I responded to the book differently, and I am quite happy it worked that way.

Late add-on, thanks to a comment from a blog visitor named Martha,  I would like to further clarify my opinion: I am ambivalent. I like the idea, I like the stories, I admire that she achieved connection with kids. Then, although I think the book could have been better organized and more thorough, it seems that kids didn't necessarily see it that way. I am trying to say she's the expert and it worked her way, and in the end that actual result is more meaningful than my critical opinion. As I tried to explain, this post happened in stages, and I wanted to leave what I wrote initially to stand, despite new pieces coming in that somewhat altered my opinion. (Thanks, Martha.)

The Marigold wonders nervously: Is it too compromising to be giving a review to a publisher? Have I been co-opted, in a way I find suspicious among reviewers of all kinds? Can one really be brutally honest in these cases? Hmmm.